Ranting on my issues with manhwa/webtoons| Professional remarried empress hater Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61328539 Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@marianneedenburg?_r=1&_t=ZT-93vifGviBED .
Talking a bit about Narrative Parallels between my protagonist and antagonist in "This Isekai Maid is Forming a Union!"
I couldn't fit this in my author's notes for episode 134 and 135, so I will put it here:
I placed a lot of narrative parallels between Bridgette and Lord Demeter throughout the story. It really shines in this episode. They are complete opposites, but they both have petty aspects to their personalities. :P
spoilers below for "This Isekai Maid is Forming a Union!" webtoon latest episodes, I talk a ton about Lord Demeter and Bridgette:
(left: episode 78, right: episode 135)
What makes them similar:
Both have gay friends they are in love with, they both are Limpetta and bisexual. They both have been victimized by mother figures who were in charge of them (like Bridgette's life with her aunt Erica, and Lord Demeter with his stepmother).
(Left: episode 71, right: episode 91)
They are connected through their relationship with Marina. She's Lord Demeter's maternal cousin, and she's Bridgette's friend. And they are both adjacent to servitude and confinement to their roles.
Green is their main color. Bridgette's is her hair, something that cannot be removed easily without losing a part of her. It is her heritage and part of her identity. Fetishized by others but commonplace among her people.
(top left: episode 17, right top and bottom: episode 8)
Lord Demeter's green is the color of his madness. Dark green is what he wears a majority of the time. But it is also his Limpetta side's family eye color. His mother's, his aunt's his cousin Marina's color. His eyes are also something he cannot change without losing something (like when the stone version of himself becomes more demonic as a result and his eyes become red).
For both Bridgette and Lord Demeter, as a result of their actions, their narratives are flipped on their heads.
Lord Demeter was born from a maid and was intended to exist to serve Anette's story, but in truth she serves his story. He reversed the order and turned her into someone who exists to solve all of his problems. And this is built into the framework of the story since rofan/Otome Isekai often place the male leads desires over the female leads dignity.
(above: episode 80)
His world is shaped by how important he is as a male lead, but in reality he'd be confined to a very tight role with only Anette/Isuel to give him purpose. In the end of the stone's timeline, he is just another noble who made advancements (by stealing his sister in laws notebook) since it was expected of them anyway. The end result is reflected in his timeline, where his country is sinking into fascism and violence because the system he "succeeded in" is violent and entitled to it's core.
(above: episode 90)
Bridgette is reincarnated as a servant in the last ten lifetimes. But she reverses her fate as a one dimensional maid character by breaking free from the stereotypes that are inflicted on her by nobles and people who discriminate against her.
As one reader pointed out in earlier chapters, she is a minor character fated to die cruelly, but she has a large and unshakable effect on the world around her. Her death has changed politics, started conflicts, etc. Many endings have been upended and reversed because of her existence. It didn't stop her from dying, but her impact was felt.
(left: episode 36, right: episode 60)
Bridgette places importance on the friendships she makes, and is careful of her words and actions. But over time in the story, she becomes more impulsive.
Lord Demeter at the beginning of the series acts on impulse. He makes decisions that are awful because he doesn't think things through. But later he makes plans and thinks ahead.
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What's refreshing about Ayla and her role as the beloved sister of Thalia is that she doesn't like her sister, but that attitude is also not depicted in a blatant cartoony manner. Ayla doesn't extend any kindness to her sister at first because she's still a child grieving her late mother, and she never does nor will she ever really extend her kindness to Thalia at all, she doesn't care about Thalia's suffering because the latter gave her no reasons to care.
SPOILER WARNING ⚠️
she has no reason to care about Thalia's death when she proposes marriage to the recently widowed Varkas, because why the hell should she? Yes, it's not like Ayla was a perfect sister herself, but Thalia and her mother still went out of their way to pretty much steal everything from her, it's honestly a miracle that the worst things Ayla has ever done to Thalia was yelling at her once when they were kids, and being a willing bystander to the abuse Gareth inflicts on Thalia. Ayla isn't like Helena Anterblum from Kill The Villainess, she has the right to be angry even if her life seems better in comparison. Does it justify allowing her brother to beat their half sister? Not exactly, but her disdain for Thalia didn't come out of nowhere
I know you don’t care about the shorts anymore, but I’m still gonna summarize it. Stolas is told by blitz to make a follow up report so IMP looks good in reviews of whatever, so Moxxie helps and they essentially write shitty fan fic about how blitz killed his target, for the day. Moxxie is an obnoxious suck up to stolas, and Stolas keeps interjects mlm porn. In the end Moxxie helps Stolas write porn because he wants to be an editor. The end.
Fun fact, Stolas doesn’t call Moxxie by his name and neither does Moxxie but Moxxie says they have good chemistry when all Moxxie does is suck up to stolas/pedantically posture over him “no you’re highness you need to explain why the target is being kidnapped. No your highness you can’t have loose plot threads” it was fine for what it was, but I hate how IMP are just sucking ups/cheerleaders for Stolas now
I'm moreso focused on the fact that the people who cannot write wrote an episode where one character is trying to give writing advice and the writing advice is bad.
I can't even tell if they are trying to be satirical because the exact advice given:
“All stories are better with a gun.”
“Sex sells!”
“We need some more immediate action.”
“What about the dangling plot threads?”
“See how it all ties together?”
“Sometimes it’s better to not overstay your welcome.”
Why do I almost hear the writers room? Not a single one of these gives any decent suggestions. None of these are worded well. These are the exact things you would say as a writer to end up making Helluva Boss. So when you have Moxxie and Stolas bonding over a poorly conceived penny dreadful that is written like how the writers write the show, the house of mirrors is now your home.
So are they admitting they write absolute garbage with any modicum of self awareness? Based on the outcome, I could almost say yes. I could almost believe every single line is a joke from them working well together to Stolas' objectively bad writing to Moxxie's "editing advice" being superficial, ill-defined, and fundamentally misunderstanding what actually is happening on a technical level. Which you need for an editor.
Moxxie is acting more like a fanfiction BetaReader but the writer is a horny edgy 16 yr old and the beta is a 14 yr old middle schooler who has a B in English.
But my main gripe is that it doesn't seem like the joke is "the characters write badly". It feels like the episode is mocking people who care about writing by mocking the process of making art.
The art itself is praised for being garbage because somewhere two gooners are giggling in a closet. And look, for fanfiction that's fine. This is a professional project, guys. Even in the short, the report is for financial reasons. No, your enjoyment is not the thing that counts, especially when the "chemistry" actively makes both characters even less likeable.
The more I write about the Roth family (Or as they will be known as in the rewrite itself: the Morozov family) The more I think it would make more sense for Isadora to actually be Rylan's LEAST favorite child.
I've been leaning more into the emotionally immature parent route with Rylan as a character. The guy is more or less an elementary school bully trapped in the body of a middle-aged man because he's felt so comfortable being miserable for so long that he sees no reason to self-reflect. Beatrice takes the most after him in terms of looks, and while she gets on his nerves on a constant basis due to being a "faulty product", he still never truly hates her until she makes the active decision to separate herself from the family. Rylan isn't just lowering Beatrice's self-esteem because he's upset that she's different, it doubles as his messed-up attempt at showing his affection towards his child. He HATES that she possesses all the same physical features he hated about himself when he was her age, but there's nothing he loves more than pointing out everyone's minute flaw, she's also the only one he can actually trust to vent his emotional struggles to because he thinks she's the only one who would truly understand the pain of being inherently flawed, inside and out.
Rylan hates himself as much as he's obsessed with being the tragic main character of his own story, Bea also happens to be the closest he'll ever have to a mini me, and as such, he mistreats Beatrice even though he prefers her being in his life over the majority of his family.
Isadora on the other hand takes after her mother in almost every way, not only that, but she's also not nearly as much of a piece of work compared to either of her parents. She's not exactly perfect but compared to her "inherently flawed family" she can certainly appear to be a flawless young lady, the best of the worst so to speak. Rylan likes that he can take advantage of his "perfect second born" for political reasons, but beyond that, there is very little affection in comparison to the annoyance and even downright jealousy he harbors for Isadora. She's more likely to stand up to him, she doesn't have as many insecurities for him to target, she's all about toxic positivity in comparison to the rest of the family's cynical nature.
TLDR: The more "useless" one of Rylan's kids are, the more likely he'll feel genuine affection for them even if it's not exactly conventional.
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I'm back from the grave with some new TRE content! 🙀✨️
I’ve seen tons of people using Rashta’s “Absolute Cinema” stickers with an AI-generated image, so I decided to draw Rashta and Navier as that meme so you can make stickers with human-drawn images 😊💖 (I didn’t just draw Rashta because we don’t play favorites here, and Navier’s fans also deserve cute art of their character that isn’t AI-generated)
I used the outfits I’d already designed for Navier and Rashta, although I didn’t have that many for Navier, so I used her divorce outfit because it’s the most recognizable 👌✨️
You can download the images from my Ko-Fi page so you can have them in high quality 💖✨
I like to imagine that during another instance where Heinrey was trying to "seduce" Navier with his god awful flirting skills, Malori and Ralph happened to be nearby and they were completely willing to risk their jobs just to listen to a foreign king be cringe so they could laugh at him behind his back later in the day.
This whole scenario I had was inspired by this portrait I stumbled upon on Pinterest and I thought it was hilariously in character for some of my ocs.
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the amazing digital circus is a show about empathy and what it does to you if you go too long without a support system so the show starts with sympathizing with Pomni (the most empathetic person, easy), ep2 is empathizing with an NPC in a game (no flaws), ep3 is empathizing with a man who has dementia, ep4 is empathizing with someone who annoys you when they're unmasking, ep5 is asking you to empathize with a rich white woman and so on....
so it all works up to the empathy boss - a bush era edgelord millenial trans girl who thinks she's Max from Sam & Max and is inherently unworthy of love
Jax reminds me of my own abusers but in a good way, and it's because of the very point OP made here.
It's so easy for some people to ask "Why can't Ragatha just beat Jax over the head with a baseball bat?" Or "Why can't everyone just make Jax bite the curb?" Because empathy is a bitch and if you have no choice but to live with someone who is making your life a living hell, you will also be forced to understand why they are like this as a symptom of living with them for so long.
It doesn't justify the abuse they inflicted on you, nor does it mean you should have to put up with it just because they're struggling, it simply means that you can still sympathize and/or emphasize with somebody while holding them accountable for their wrongdoings at the same time.
To me, what separates Jax from a character like Stolas for example is that each character has their own opinion on her that they formed by themselves based on their experiences with her, and it's why I really like her as much as I hate her. Jax isn't despised by the entirety of the circus crew nor is she forgiven and babied like some "fans" claim.
Pomni has the most positive and sympathetic opinion on Jax simply because Jax didn't have the time necessary to hurt her they way she hurt Ribbit, Kaufmo, Gangle, and Ragatha. In fact, Pomni didn't really have any positive opinions on Jax at first up until episode five when Pomni got to know Jax beyond the obnoxious class clown persona she likes to put up. One argument also doesn't mean that the relationship has completely soured so it's unrealistic to expect Pomni to immediately assume that Jax is no longer worth sticking around for after episode six, the montage between Jax and Ribbit literally explains to us that in order for a relationship to truly be broken beyond repair, there needs to be repeating patterns and behavior throughout an extended period of time.
Jax had the time she needed to completely destroy any chance at a positive relationship with characters like Gangle, she didn't have that when it came to Pomni, which consequently means that she would still have the ability to feel sympathy for Jax.
Thats not Jax being an author's pet, that's just a different take on the concept of human empathy, in the real world, it usually isn't reserved for perfect people who did no wrong.
Does that mean Jax is written perfectly and you can't criticize her or the writing of TADC? No, as much as I personally like how Jax was written, she'd be #5 on my top 5 list of favorite morally deplorable characters (if she'd even makes it to my top 5 to begin with) There are characters in other pieces of media who are better written than her but I don't think she's as badly written as everyone insists she is.
INCEST: PART THREE / Death is the only Ending for a Villainess
It’s unthinkable so it is not real. Dorothée Dussy’s Le berceau des dominations: Anthropologie de l’inceste explains that perpetrators of incest always think that incest is something other than what they are doing. Incest is always something specific (rape, molestation), and what the perpetrator of incest is doing never “counts.” This denial and dissociation occurs no matter how severe and obviously incestuous what the perpetrator is doing is. It could always be “worse” and somehow, it always lies just outside of what could really be considered incest.
I don't know about you but I'm pretty sure there's a difference between "An author's pet who doesn't suffer from any consequences" and "A character who was established as a terrible person not being brutally assaulted with a baseball bat specifically as a form of karma"
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Alan probably had his own moment on the same level as Bear's "What's so bad about being with me?" Line when Rashta was begging him to run away with her.
Something along the lines of "Why do you want me to suffer with you?" (Which he basically canoncially told her) Or "I'm not responsible for what my father did."
Alphatart can try to paint him as "the good one" of the Rimwell family, a man who stepped up as a single father so Ian could grow up with a happy childhood regardless if his mother was in his life or not, but even then, his true nature can't help but reveal itself whenever he forces himself back into Rashta's life with his pathetic sob story about how "sorry" he is while he simultaneously victimizes himself by claiming that he had so much to lose if he ran away with her.
It's always about him at the end of the day, Rashta's trauma on the other hand is less important at best and downright invalidated at worst.
He's just as terrible as Bear, there's nothing Alphatart can do that will successfully convince outsiders that he's just as much of a victim as Rashta.
